He hadn’t just brought blankets and pillows into her backyard along with his air mattress. He’d brought a hurricane lamp—an electric one that wouldn’t catch fire, but could still be turned down low. He’d also brought condoms and some towels and a bottle of wine. Pinot noir—how did he know? He’d brought a pair of stemless glasses, too, and he poured her one as the romantic light from that lantern played across his handsome face.
“I turned off the gas in both our houses,” he told her as he handed her the glass of wine. “Just to be extra safe. Everything looks good in yours—just a few things broken—a couple framed photos. Books fell out of bookshelves. Nothing big fell over.”
“There’s nothing big to fall over,” she pointed out. She’d purposely gotten rid of anything tall before the move to California. Now all of their bookshelves and cabinets were either built-in or low to the ground. “How about your place?” she asked.
“I had a few expensive casualties,” he told her. “Maddie’s computer was on the kitchen counter. It hit the floor and did not survive.”
“Oh, no.”
“Better hers than yours,” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” she countered. “I’m militant when it comes to backup. You know, I was thinking. About Maddie? That in the morning, we should push. Just a little. See if she’ll take a call—talk to me on the phone.”
Peter nodded. “I also want to touch base with that lawyer—Fiona’s aunt.”
“I thought you did that this afternoon.”
“No,” he said. “I tried, but she wasn’t in—she was at the courthouse. I was going to wait, but then I got the call to go to the base. And then everything took too much time. It’s okay—I seriously doubt she’s going to tell me anything new.”
“I’d like to go with you,” Shayla said. No way was she making that I’ll go if you want mistake twice.
He smiled because, like always, he was paying attention. “That’s great,” he said, “because I’d like for you to come, too.” He lifted his wineglass in a toast. “To good communication.”
Shay smiled back at him as they clinked—and the earth shifted again. It was hard to know if that was real or an illusion created from the heat in his eyes. Either way, she felt safe.
He took a sip, so she did, too, and…“Wow, that’s excellent.”
“A reminder that California’s got a lot more going for it than earthquakes and black widow spiders.”
“And crazy people who ride around in their trucks with a bucket of feces to throw at sailors?”
“That was another first for me,” Peter admitted. “My day’s been full of them—some significantly better than others.” He smiled at her, leaning back on his elbow, but then wincing, because, yeah. That was the elbow he’d scraped, saving her from the flying shit-bucket of doom.
“Let me see that,” she said, putting her glass down on the ground beside the air mattress, and he smiled, because yes, again, he knew that she wanted to touch him, and this was an easy way to get that party started. He obediently held out his arm as she scooted closer, letting go of the fleece blanket that he’d draped around her shoulders to keep her warm while the mattress inflated.
Shay took his arm and angled it toward the light. The scrape was still raw, but he’d cleaned it well and although it looked angry, it didn’t look infected. He leaned back, in order to set down his own glass beyond the edge of the mattress, and all of his many, many muscles shifted and flexed as he did a halfway, diagonal equivalent of a sit-up, pulling her attention away from his elbow.
When he sat back up, his face was right there, so she took it between her hands, and kissed him.
It was a kiss of the same variety as the one he’d first given to her—sweet, practically chaste. She’d liked it—not just the sensation of only their lips touching, but the very idea of it. It held a subtext—no, actually it held a message that was unmistakable in its inherent respect. I’d like to kiss you, and I think you’d like to kiss me, too, it said. But if I’m wrong about that, please let me know, and I’ll back it down a notch.
And sure enough, as Shayla pulled back to look into those blue, blue eyes, Peter smiled. He leaned in to kiss her again, this time with a gentle mingling of their tongues, and he said, “Mmm. I was right. That wine is good, but it tastes even better on you.”
There they sat, then, her fingers back in his hair, just smiling at each other, on a cheap air mattress in the pop-up tent that she’d gotten during Tevin’s oh-so-brief camping phase. The boys had slept out in their Massachusetts backyard maybe half a dozen times—and always with her sleeping between them, right in the middle.
Tonight was going to be an entirely different, completely new experience. “Huh,” she said.
Peter nodded as if he could somehow read her mind, as he lightly ran his hand down her arm, from the narrow straps of her top to her wrist and then back. But then, as he used just a few fingers to trace her collar bone—a sensation that made her breathless—he asked, “Have I apologized yet for this afternoon?”
Shay shook her head, no, as he ran his fingers along her tank’s neckline, his fingers warm against the tops of her breasts. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, I kind of do. I wanted…this. And I was too afraid to just say it.” He smiled, but he didn’t go any further. He just ran his fingers back the other way. “In my defense, I was, well, it’s kind of like, you don’t try to kiss the prettiest girl at the party if you’ve just puked. I was a little too aware of the whole shit-caked-in-my-ears thing.”
Shay laughed. What he was doing to her felt so good, she returned the favor, but since he was shirtless, she trailed her fingers across his stomach, along the top of his shorts.
It was his turn to draw in a deep breath as she did go farther, tucking her fingers—just a little, just the tips—into the waistband right below his belly button.
Peter was looking down at her bare legs, touching her with his gaze from the edge of her shorts all the way down to her toes before following with his hand—his full palm this time, and God, that nearly made her eyes roll back in her head, so she touched him the same way, running her hands from his shoulders down his arms, down his chest.
“Babe, your hotness factor has at least seven zeros regardless of what’s in your ears,” she whispered. “Although, I have to confess, I do like you hosed down and squeaky clean. And lying on your back.”
Oh dear God, had she really just said that? It was a line of dialogue one of her extra-feisty heroines might say.
But, damn, it was effective, because he gently pulled himself free from her hands, and lay back on the mattress. On his back.
He was close enough to touch her, and he did—reaching for her, and pulling her toward him. “I’m not sure how I like you yet—I’m reserving that for after I conduct a thorough investigation—but I strongly suspect that you, naked, on top of me, while I’m on my back, is going to vie for my favorite.”